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Irving Berlin was born Israel Baline on 11 May 1888 in Tumun, Russia. He fled with his parents and emigrated to the United States, settling in New York’s Lower East Side.
A self-taught pianist, he began to compose and write his own lyrics. By 1911 he had both his first Tin Pan Alley hit “Alexander’s Ragtime Band,” and his new professional name, Irving Berlin. Berlin wrote 17 complete scores for the American Musical Theatre (including “As Thousands Cheer,” “Annie Get Your Gun,” “Call Me Madam”) and several Hollywood films (including “Top Hat,” “Holiday Inn,” “Easter Parade”).
On 22 September 1989, at the age of 101, Irving Berlin died in his sleep in his town house in New York City. His more than 1,200 works, a century-long legacy that includes everything from rags to ballads, show tunes to torch songs, and fox trots to anthems, captured and helped define the musical and social trends of the era in which he wrote.
(reference: Smithsonian Institution) |
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“When Maude Maggart picks up a ukulele, steps back from the microphone and sings Irving Berlin’s “What’ll I Do?” in a delicate, unearthly soprano, that shopworn comparison of singer to nightingale comes to mind. . . . But it is in Berlin’s classic waltzes – “When I Lost You,” What’llI do?,” “All Alone,” “Remember” and “Always” – that Ms. Maggart’s voice fuses with the material into avowals of sadness and devotions that sigh like the wind in the eaves.”
--Stephen Holden, THE NEW YORK TIMES
“Ms. Maggart, whose speciality is early American pop, gives us the virtually unknown verse on the neglected ‘Soft Lights and Sweet Music.’ Her piece de resistance, however, is the 1911 ‘Yiddisha Nightengale.’ She and accompanist Lanny Meyers could have treated the love story of Abie Cohn and his tenement Tettrazini as a Semitic novelty . . . But they take the high road and do it completely straight, emphasizing Berlin’s Hebraic harmonies, which are in a minor-key antecedent to the ‘Russian Lullaby.’”
--Will Friedwald THE NEW YORK SUN
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